Alexander Miller
Guitar
Alexander Elliott Miller is a composer and guitarist whose music has been described as “deceptively laid back in an LA way…inventive….unconventional” (LA Times), and “wild…unearthly…lyrical…a voice worth listening to” (San Francisco Classical Voice).
His compositions have been performed at Carnegie Hall and London’s Mile End Art Pavilion; he has collaborated with Grammy nominated musicians including pianists Vicki Ray, Aron Kallay and soprano Tony Arnold, as well as many contemporary classical ensembles and organizations such as HOCKET, Juventas New Music Ensemble, Earplay New Chamber Music, the Boston New Music Initiative, the Los Angeles Percussion Quartet, Panic Duo and Duo Montagnard among others. His compositions have been presented on the programs of many California based venues and series including San Francisco’s Center for New Music, Hot Air Festival and ODC Theatre, and Los Angeles’ Piano Spheres, Tuesdays at Monk Space, Hear Now Festival, Synchromy, People Inside Electronics, Carlsbad Music Festival, Microfest and the LA Conservancy. He has received honors including a MacDowell Colony Fellowship, Earplay Donald Aird Composers Award, a Definiens C3 Commission and the CAPMT Commissioned Composer Award.
His album TO….OBLIVION: Historic Landmarks Around Los Angeles was released in the fall of 2018; the work is a collection of pieces inspired by six lost landmarks in LA, each of some social significance, scored for solo electric guitar, sound effects and video. The album received profiles in the LAist and Long Beach Press Telegram, and will be presented on Boston Court Performing Arts Center’s 2019 season in Pasadena.
Miller is on the faculty of California State University Long Beach, where he teaches music theory, composition and musicianship at the Bob Cole Conservatory of Music. During the Spring of 2017 at CSULB, he served as the Interim Graduate Advisor. He also works at Chapman University, where he initiated and developed a new Composition and Songwriting course for non-music majors, which has since become a required course for Music Technology minors. In November of 2018, he served as Composition Masterclass Clinician for the Music Association of California Community Colleges State Conference in San Diego.
He holds a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Composition from the University of Southern California, a Master of Music in Composition from the Eastman School of Music, and Bachelor of Music degrees in Composition & Guitar Performance from the University of Colorado at Boulder.